Let Him Who Has Loved Love Tomorrow
by EldritchWhore
Summary: A few scenes about the profound moments between Roy Mustang and Riza Hawkeye. Ch. 5: Homunculus
1. Figures

**Welcome to my very first fanfic! (yay.) The title comes from the poem _Pervigilium Veneris _via Soterianyx's analysis of Hawkeye's tattoo. I've also used a bit of her analysis in this chapter. I'm considering putting these scenes in a multi-chapter fic I'm in the middle of, but for now, they live here. Please review and let me know if you like these and I'll write you some more.**

**Fullmetal Alchemist belongs to Hiromu Arakawa.**

Riza Hawkeye sat on the floor of her living room, leaning her side against the couch and holding a balled up blanket to her chest. Roy was kneeling just behind her, studying a certain section of Master Hawkeye's notes. The central shapes had been easy to understand, and he was fairly sure that the most significant research was written on the left side, beneath the tails of one of the serpents, but he hadn't yet cracked the second layer of the Master's code.

"Did your father leave behind a cipher for decoding his research?" He asked.

"No," she said. "The only record he left, research or otherwise, is the tattoo."

"Hm," he grunted. "Deuterio . . . Looks like I'll have to brush up on some chemistry."

Riza laughed. "Cadet training's already made you forget your alchemy?"

"Of course not! This is just, not like anything I've seen before."

She nodded idly, letting her head drift onto the couch cushion she was leaning against.

Damn, he thought. Roy knew Master Hawkeye was brilliant, but this research was so far out of his depth he was embarrassed for insisting he was ready to learn flame alchemy. "An indestructible quality." He wished Master Hawkeye was here to teach him himself. He wished Master Hawkeye was here so that . . . so that _she_ wouldn't have to be all alone.

Roy let out a heavy sigh. Riza started – he hadn't realized how close he had inched to her back – and turned over her shoulder.

"I'm sorry," he said quickly, but she seemed surprised, not upset, as she looked at him. All at once, Roy became captivated by her. He was close enough to see how the light caught the strands of her irises, to smell the hint of perfume she was wearing. Move back, you idiot, he said to himself. But he didn't, and neither did she. Before he understood what he was doing, he kissed her. Riza leaned into his mouth, parting her lips just slightly and catching him in a deeper kiss. Then it was over, as quickly as it had begun.

Roy knelt completely still, palms facing slightly forward, toward Riza. She looked at him, unchanged, stoic, as she always looked and . . . _damn_. Beautiful. She was so beautiful. And then, she smiled. "Thank you for being here, Roy. For letting me share the weight of it."

"Of course." He was still shaken too much by what had just transpired to think of anything else to say, but he hoped his voice had conveyed his sincerity to her.

Still wearing that enthralling smile, she leaned forward, setting her chin at his shoulder and one arm against his back. Instinctively, he returned her embrace, becoming suddenly aware of his palms on her skin. They're feverish, he realized with embarrassment, but he would be more embarrassed to withdraw them now. So he held her, hands shaking with the exultation of it. The feeling of touching her, her voice, her scent, swirled madly in his head. They sat there together until Roy's adrenaline wore off and he was struck with an inexplicable exhaustion. Not entirely by choice, he fell back against the carpet, taking her gently with him. Her head fell against his chest, her hand across his stomach. He found himself lacing his fingers through hers. This was what he wanted to protect by becoming an officer, he realized. People like Riza Hawkeye, and moments like this. He would keep her safe.


	2. Erasure

He was in Master Hawkeye's old research laboratory, on the upper floor of the house. It remained just as Riza Hawkeye had left it years ago as an officer cadet. She was here too, sitting backwards on a chair, arms hugging the back of it to her chest. Her shoulder blades shivered with the cold and the anticipation. She seemed far away from him. He didn't want to do what she asked. He wanted to lay down and hold her and be held by her. But he couldn't. His affection was chained in the past. Passion had been replaced by grief. They were no longer children, and he was a man of his word.

Mustang pulled on a glove.

"Lieutenant?"

"I'm ready, sir."

His eyes were already wet when the spark hit her skin like a bomb at the end of a fuse. She screamed.

Ice, water, medicine—it was all laid out on the worktable. Mustang clutched at the sides of it, using all his restraint. He would have to let her burn first. Just a few minutes, he told himself. His legs gave out underneath him and he crashed to his knees, pounding the ceramic floor with his fists, matching her screams with his own. "Haven't I caused enough suffering?!" The arrogance he'd had to say he'd protect the ones he loved. He couldn't even keep her safe.

This damned place. He should never have come here at all.

Hawkeye's screams gave way to sobs, and then to gasps. He heard her stand, unbelievably, from her chair. She walked over to the worktable, dragging her feet, changing her mind at the last minute and turned, vomiting into the waste bin. Mustang finally looked up. She was kneeling, shaking. He got himself to his feet. He reached out to her.

"Major Mustang, sir." Her voice was so cool, as if she might give him an order.

He stopped. "Yes, Lieutenant."

"I," her voice faltered as she convulsed again, dry heaving, coughing. "Can you get me some water? Please."

"Of course-" A glass. Pitcher. It was cold. He held it out to her.

A piece of linen, dipped in cool water, draped over her back.

She couldn't hold up the weight of the glass. He pressed it to her lips. He let his other hand weave around her lower back, and she immediately released her weight into his arm.

"Thank you," she said, releasing her tenuous grip on the glass of water. She pitched backwards, losing the ability to keep herself upright.

Mustang set the glass on the floor. He took the coat hanging off his shoulders and laid it across her chest. She shivered.

"It's not you," she said, her breath hitching and uneven.

"What?"

"It's-" she coughed again. "Not your fault. This. It's not your fault."

Mustang turned his face away in shame. The smell of burning flesh lodged in his throat. He could hear them—all of them. Crying. Her screams echoed in his head. He saw her eyes. Exhausted. Ishval had turned them all into killers. He had taken flame alchemy from her and used it like a dog. And she had followed him into this military hellhole.

There can be no more flame alchemists.

She reached up and grabbed a fistful of his shirt. "Mustang. Roy." She tugged, forcing him to look back at her. "It's not you. I trust you."

Yes, trust. That was the thread that bound them together, even in the desert, even before. Even now. She trusted him. And he trusted her, with his life, with all his guilt. Even in the darkness of the wake of Ishval, there was that. There would always be that.

Mustang wept. "What do I do, Hawkeye?"

"Keep going," she said without hesitation. "You can still protect the people you love. You can change this country. You have to."

He gripped her wrist, holding it against his chest. "Alright, Lieutenant."

"There you go." She smiled weakly. "It's going to get better."

Maybe she was right.


	3. Resembool

She was more shaken than she had let on. Sure, it was the boy in the chair—Edward, the one the Lieutenant Colonel said had fire in his eyes. But with a little distance from Resembool, the horror of their transmutation, of his missing limbs, had faded. Lieutenant Hawkeye had seen men and children maimed in a way not much different. Mostly, it was the younger boy. Alphonse, she remembered. He had stood with his armored hand on Mustang's arm—_we're sorry, we didn't mean it—_

His voice echoed over again in her head.

Hawkeye could smell the dust and the gunpowder, could feel the soreness in her knees as she knelt hours at a window, the barrel of her rifle set against the sill. Lots of soldiers had this, she thought vaguely, the visceral feeling of being back in the field. She knew that Mustang had experienced it too, though he didn't talk about it. Hawkeye pulled the trigger of her rifle; it kicked back against her shoulder; the sound, the bang, only a thud through the cotton in her ears. Three hundred meters away, and still she could smell the metallic tang of the blood. She bit her lip until it, too, bled. She cocked the gun again. Two hundred and fifty meters. She didn't mean it. Oh God, she didn't mean it.

The boy was hollow inside.

Hawkeye thought of this as she returned quietly to the seat of the cab. He had no heart, no lungs, no pain. No sleep. No way to escape the mental anguish.

And the girl. How much of herself, of Riza, Hawkeye saw in that girl. There's someone I need to protect, she had told her. How could that be enough for the girl to understand why people kill, or why the officers had come, offering to take her friends away?

Mustang.

"Lieutenant." He was there, sitting across the seat from her. His uniform was wrinkled, hands raw from wringing them together. He was tired. It was there again his eyes, as it was so often since the last day at her father's house. The reluctance to really look at her, even when their eyes met.

"Yes, sir."

"Something wrong?"

She hesitated just a moment. "Nothing, sir."

He cast his eyes downward, nodding, somehow understanding, still. "There's no shame in telling me your trouble, Hawkeye. We used to tell each other things, didn't we?"

"I think you're hardly one to talk, sir."

He glanced up, not quite playfully, and chuckled solemnly through his nose. "Fair enough."

A few minutes passed in silence. They'd been back just over a year now. Some days were better than others. Some things were getting easier, like watching through to the end of a film or going out for a walk by herself. Things had changed between them, but not for worse. Her duty to him was now spelled out in a military assignment. She watched his back to keep him safe from assailants, and from himself. He kept her close to him, and she kept him close to himself.

"That was kind of you," she said.

Mustang glanced up. "Hm?"

"What you offered those boys. Instead of condemnation—hope."

Hawkeye knew more about alchemy than most people did. She was her father's confidante and sounding board. She knew the laws and the theories, and even the formula for flame alchemy, even though she lacked the skill to use it. She knew what was said against those who perform human transmutation.

"They're only kids. I have to believe this country can be repaired, so," he shrugged, "I guess that means I believe they can too."

Hawkeye felt a surge of pride for her superior. Her friend. Like her father, an alchemist.

_We didn't mean it. _

She heard the boy's voice again, reverberating through his empty metal body, and felt her mind tug her consciousness back towards Ishval. She wondered if the flashbacks would ever disappear, or even slow in their frequency. They were worse towards the beginning, more frightening. She was learning to let them pass without making too much of a fuss, but they still made her sick.

Mustang put a hand on her shoulder. "Lieutenant."

She blinked a few times, suddenly disoriented. "Sir?"

"Nothing, is it?" He looked at her expectantly, smiling a little.

"I apologize. It's been a difficult day for . . ." _For what?_

"Don't apologize, Hawkeye. I only want to make sure you're alright."

She lifted her hand to his, still on her shoulder, and gave it a little squeeze before lifting it off. "I'm alright."

"You'd tell me if you weren't?"

Hawkeye chuckled inwardly. Sometimes he was still precisely the Roy that she knew in her youth. That was comforting. "Yes, of course."

He leaned back into his seat, sufficiently satisfied. It was easy to forget how he was as a child, rambunctious and shy and _far _too smart for his age, but there he was, arms folded sloppily and the same crease in his brow that he had when puzzling out a new equation at her father's behest. How perfectly absurd.


	4. Vice

In 1909, when the soldiers in Ishval came by the hundreds back into Amestrian society, they wanted to come home. To return to their families or begin new ones. Maybe they would be offered administrative positions or separation from active duty, so they could begin to reclaim the lives they gave to the military and Order 3066.

But, of course, Ishval followed. The veterans flooded into taverns, gambling houses, brothels, anything to keep the ghost of it off their backs. Even Riza Hawkeye could remember nights alone in her apartment in East City, nursing a bottle of hard liquor and a burn on her back that was taking too long to heal. Grappling with the realization that she could no longer live in this world as she used to, that the space she had occupied had been filled up while her gun was trained on Ishvalan monks.

After a while, Roy Mustang decided different for himself. He knew what he needed to do, and he wasn't going to let any kind of vice keep him from seeing it through, from clouding his judgment. Hawkeye followed. They picked up a habit of staying up at the office when things were particularly bad, all night if they needed to, talking or reading, eating if they could stomach it, anything but drinking—some kind of tortuous ritualistic vigil that at least led them through the nights and into the mornings in a state of relative safety. The frequency of these vigils decreased over time, but the system of support remained intact.

So, after the funeral, they went to the office.

Hawkeye stayed at his shoulder as he moved slowly, listlessly, looking at the space around him, until he finally sat at his desk. She poured him some water. He put his fingertips on the glass and rotated it slowly on the desk, making clear spots in the condensation. His eyes were still red.

Hawkeye looked at him. She felt a wild desire to run her fingers through his hair, to kiss the top of his head and the hollow beneath his jaw, to press her face into his neck and let his head rest heavy on her shoulder. She wanted to let her hands follow the curve of his ribcage and hold him up with her own strength and lay his head in her lap and let him fall asleep.

It surprised her. It wasn't as if the affection they had for each other was any secret to her, but hers was a character of subtlety and measure. Never had her affection so violently taken on the face of _wanting. _Never had she felt its force with such desperation. It was the grief. It was _his _grief. And his anger, his regret, his helplessness. How truly, _truly, _awful.

Mustang swallowed some of the water. "Well, Hawkeye."

"Yes, sir."

He gestured vaguely. "What now? What do I do?"

She suddenly remembered the way he smelled with alarming clarity. "I . . . don't know, sir."

He laughed melancholically and pressed the heel of one palm to his eye. "If Lieutenant Hawkeye doesn't know what I'm supposed to do, then I'm screwed for sure."

She thought he might start to cry again, but when he lifted his face it was like stone. She felt her throat constrict. "Colonel, I—"

"It's alright, Lieutenant." He downed the rest of his water. "That's not fair of me, I'm sorry."

"No, sir. I—I should have something to say, but . . ." Images of him fell through her mind. Roy Mustang as a boy, an alchemist's apprentice, a cadet, a demon, a commander, a companion. "I'll be here to . . . I won't let you forge your way alone. I'll follow you."

A thoughtful grin peeked at the edge of his mouth. "I know."

She nodded, smiling just a little. They held their eye contact for another minute still, passing all needed information wordlessly between each other. Then he said, just above a whisper, "Will we ever outrun our sins?" He looked away as soon as he said it, and Hawkeye knew that he didn't quite mean for it to come out aloud. He didn't want an answer from her. But she considered it. When Hawkeye left Ishval, with Mustang's promise to erase her tattoo, she thought that she'd finally be free of it, of everything. But one thing leads into another, and Ishval follows, and even now there were alchemists being hunted for their crimes, and friends murdered for knowing too much. She was still on the bank of a great, tumultuous river, barring her from the freedom she craved. She, and Mustang, and Edward and Alphonse, and so many others. Would they ever reach the other side?

Mustang stood abruptly from his desk, shaking his coat free from his shoulders. He walked over to a bench along one of the walls; Hawkeye watched. He dropped his coat, leaned over and rolled himself onto the bench so he was laying down. He closed his eyes.

"I can drive you home, sir." She walked over to him. "You need some sleep."

"No," he said. "No—I want to stay here with you."

She smiled, genuinely this time. "Alright." She gingerly approached the bench and, then deciding, lifted his head gently so that she could sit and lay it on her lap. He turned over onto his side, reaching an arm around her so that he hugged her legs to his head. Hawkeye looked down. Colonel, state alchemist, falling asleep on her lap. She laid a hand on his head and felt the slickness and softness of his hair. Patience, she told herself.


	5. Homunculus

He had dreamt of her again. A nightmare. She had been screaming—he had heard her scream too many times in his life and when he dreamt of her he could hear every one in sequence. It began by the river when they were young. He had fallen in and hit his head, blood and silt blinding him as the current pulled him under. She had screamed for help, and when none came, she reached in herself and grabbed him by his hair and his collar, her foot anchored in a notch between two rocks. She pulled him out with incredible strength for her eleven years, continuing to shout until one of the neighbors heard and brought help. And then it was Ishval, one of the nights soon after she was transferred to the same unit he and Hughes were in. It was one shout of grief and horror. He had been in the medic's tent being treated for a minor gunshot wound, but he knew it was her, somewhere outside. He asked them if she was hurt, but they said no, not any physical injuries. Maybe it was a panic attack. And then it was _him _hurting her, burning her, and failing to comfort her.

The last scene was the most vivid. Again he was covered in blood, only some of it his own, limping along the tunnels beneath central, following her voice.

Wait a minute.

_The lieutenant—_

So when you said you'd already had to kill someone—

_Move faster, Mustang, you idiot!_

It can't be. You didn't!

_Hawkeye! Damn it!_

You _bitch!_

_He tried to shout back to her._

Alphonse, leave me and save yourself. Run. Go!

_Riza!_

He had woken up at that point and had to remind himself that he had reached her in time. That Alphonse had protected her, that Lust was dead, that Hawkeye had leaned over him and put her hand across his chest to feel his breathing and that she was alright.

So it was that waking and sleeping, his head drummed with _her. _He was working his ass off to keep up with his work, gathering information through Christmas's network on the sly, and trying to plot his next move without putting any of his men on the chopping block. But beneath all of that, there was her, just as, one way or another, there always had been.

selim bradley is homunculus.

She was surrounded.

_Bastards._

Mustang ran his thumb over the thread in a seam of his jacket as he slouched in his chair. He should have been paying attention to the presentation but honestly, he didn't give a damn. Some lieutenant general was reading policy changes in preparation for this year's training exercises. But Mustang's focus was on Fuhrer Bradley and his assistant, standing threateningly in the corner. He knew Bradley relished the colonel's struggle; he was flaunting his power over Hawkeye deliberately. He was making them suffer.

She had been scanning the rows of officers for the past few minutes. She was looking for him. He saw the way that her eyes darted from place to place, in the way the she stood and clenched her jaw. She was terrified. Almost _nothing _terrified his lieutenant. He wondered if she'd been able to eat, if she'd been sleeping properly. He knew how she got when she was nervous. He scoured his mind for anything that he could do for her.

Her eyes finally found him the crowd. He almost jumped with the exhilaration of it, palpable in his desperation. Mustang searched her eyes for anything that could tell him what to do for her.

She held their contact for a few pregnant seconds before giving him the slightest nod of her head, almost like a salute. And then, a grim smile. She was trying to tell him that she was alright. So remarkably strong, unbreakable, powerful.

He loved her so much.

That feeling settled into him with a sweet resignation. He let himself look over her the contours of her body, then her face again. He tried to remember what it felt like to be touched by her. To be kissed—he hadn't thought of that in years. It had only happened once. But why? Why hadn't he kissed her again? Why hadn't he thought to romance her, take her with him back to Central, or promise to marry her after he graduated? Why hadn't he asked her to run away with him once they found each other in Ishval, away from all the atrocity and the guilt? Why hadn't he ever told her that he was in love with her because she was the best person he had ever known?

Hawkeye furrowed her brow a bit in question. She could see the change in his face. He tried to replicate the smile she had given him before, but her eyes narrowed in response. She didn't buy it. And then, Bradley was turning over his shoulder and mumbling something to her. She took out a pen and paper, quickly jotted something down, and saluted the Fuhrer before walking out without looking back.

The room without her in it felt cold. Mustang bent over his knees, rubbing the images of homunculi out of his eyes. He felt so much regret. He imagined Hughes laughing, slapping him on the back, telling him that it took him long enough to figure out his priorities, and are you going to go after her yourself or are you too much of a coward? _Mind your own damn business, Hughes, _he thought. _It's not as simple as it was for you. _


End file.
